


Burn Me Up

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:09:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ava comes to a decision about what it is she really wants from Boyd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> Set during episode 2.10 "Debts and Accounts." One-shot. Written because I liked the idea, but also to fill my "electrocution" square for hc_bingo.

The night after Boyd came to Ava’s door and apologized to her for all that he’d done, after she’d been returned safely to her home by the skinny, blond Marshall, she’d lain awake trying to find sleep and she remembered what Boyd had told her.

She thought about how he’d said he’d changed and the strangest thing had crossed her mind-- he’d never speak to her again with lust in his voice. She’d never feel the whisper of his breath across her skin, as he told her what he wanted to do to her.

“I’d take you to my trailer, Ava, and I’d lock the fucking door. We’d break that bed, I swear to God, and you’d yell so loud, Bowman would think I was killing you,” he’d said and hadn’t ever touched her. But he’d stand so close, and speak so low, like it was a threat, one he never followed through on.

Never again, she thought in her bed, and wondered when it was that fear had transformed into danger which was so much closer to excitement and desire. Perhaps it was the moment she’d taken Bowman out of the equation when she pulled the trigger on that rifle. Perhaps it had always been there, confused in a jumble of uncertainty and fear. That edge of want had been inside her, waiting.

She wondered this at the cusp of a deep exhausted sleep that pulled her away from such thoughts, into the realm of forgotten dreams.

 

She didn’t remember again until he’d been living in her house for several weeks.

When the kitchen’s breaker blew one evening, Ava didn’t bother to wait for Boyd, or even think of asking his help. Lord knew, she’d taken care of this problem more times than she could count. Ava even remembered once it had happened when Boyd was over for football, and neither he nor Bowman had moved to go flip the switch on the fuse box. It wasn’t the tv that had blown, so they were both blissfully unconcerned.

She heard him following her that night, though, and smirked at the memory as she thumped down the darkened stairs. The kitchen and the basement were of course on the same circuit and so she held her biggest flashlight in her hands, swinging it at her feet and at the wall where the fuse box was mounted. She threw open the metal door and heard Boyd call her name from the top of the stairs.

“I got it. It’s fine,” she answered and moved to flip back the switch.

As she did so, her finger brushed against a wire fixture that Bowman had for some reason left exposed. The seconds stretched out as the jolt ran up her arm and burned for a half a beat in her chest before she could rip her hand away. The pain had tore a wordless cry from her lips and she followed it up with a string of curses as Boyd thundered down the stairs.

She’d dropped the flashlight and it had rolled noisily away, illuminating the opposite wall and reflecting dimly across the room.

She looked up at Boyd, blinking, her hand cradled to her side, though it was really half her body that seemed to be sizzling. The world felt wide and narrow at the same time, everything in her head seemed to be buzzing and everything outside of it was fuzzy.

He said her name, but it came out as another buzz. He said it again, but she only heard him finally when he demanded, “Let me see.”

It was he who reached for her hand, and she let him have it. Her attention was on her heart, beating like she’d just sprinted a mile, and on the tingling sensation radiating from the center of her limb and out. The rest of her felt quiet in comparison, like all of her had been pared down to these two parts. Her breath hadn’t even caught up with her heartbeat and everything else seemed slow.

Boyd examined her hand with careful fingers, holding it close to his face to see in the dim light, but found no evidence of a burn. Ava knew this, because she could feel it. There wasn’t one there, not on her skin. The burn was on the inside.

Boyd looked up at the fuse box, and saw the offending wire. Something fierce came into his eyes as Ava’s heart beat still so fast. He spoke low and hot, it brushed over her shaking hand in a furious caress.

“Of all the thoughtless, negligent, dangerous fucking things,” he swore. His hand tightened around Ava’s. “I would march into hell after you, for all the trouble you’ve caused. I would feed you that rifle, and we’d see if blowing out half your brains would’ve put any sense into them.”

She thought she heard a kind of suppression in his voice, when he spoke in that way, of something bigger than he, like what was within him was so much more than what he could allow out and it simmered and burned low inside him, waiting. It was dangerous and furious and ravenous. It was frightening.

She was reminded of his voice in the kitchen, or outside the bathroom, or in countless other places he had accosted her, and that feeling came roaring back, the one she’d barely remembered when she realized she’d never feel it again. It wasn’t only this fear though, there was a restlessness at the root of it, something she recognized within Boyd as well as herself.

Her heartbeat had still not slowed down.

He glanced aside at her and she saw him realize he’d said that out loud. She must have looked like something was terribly wrong, either from the shock or her thoughts, because he turned back to her swiftly, like nothing at all had been said and told her in a hushed, careful tone, “You’re all right, Ava.”

“I know,” she said haltingly and, to her embarrassment, tears sprang to her eyes. “It just doesn’t feel that way.” She knew she was fine, but her body didn’t seem to agree with her.

She was grateful he didn’t try very much harder to soothe her. Perhaps he knew it would be unwelcome. He let go of her hand, flipped the breaker with a decisive motion to his fingers, and bent to pick up the flashlight. The lights flickered on above their heads and he smiled reassuringly at her. “You want some tea?” he asked.

She nodded and he took the stairs two at a time, she following slowly after.

There was a steaming mug of Lipton’s and two ibuprofen sitting on the table when she emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. Boyd was sitting out on the porch, book in hand, as if none of it had happened, and Ava thought about what he’d said.

She didn’t forget about it either. It felt seared into her, in her heart, in her head, on the inside, waiting.

 

When Boyd went on his recruiting mission, to Johnny’s and then Arlo’s, Ava spent the day wandering around her house, pretending she wasn’t worrying. She stripped the bed, cooked lunch, smoked on the porch, cleaned the kitchen thoroughly, made the bed, swept and vacuumed the floors, and sat outside again to smoke.

It was then that she realized she wasn’t entirely sure what she was worrying about. She knew Boyd wouldn’t be doing anything dangerous that day. He was taking the first tentative steps on a path that began when he conned the mining company out of that land, and she’d been behind him the whole way. She understood the danger, but also knew that it hadn’t yet actually arisen.

Ava suddenly realized that perhaps it wasn’t worry she was feeling, that maybe there was something else buried under it, that restlessness coming back again.

So she sat there and lit another cigarette and thought long and hard about what was riding her. Then she thought about what it was she thought she wanted and what it was she really wanted.

Boyd came home about an hour later, and Ava was still on the porch. She’d just lit her sixth cigarette.

“Ava?” he said hesitantly.

She licked her lips and tried to coalesce all that she had thought about into some sort of conversation, something she could tell him, ask him, something that would make any kind of sense. She took a drag from her cigarette. She felt strung up, wound tight. She’d smoked too much today.

Boyd waited for her.

“Are you going to turn back into that man?” She finally asked, exhaling the ashy smoke with the question.

His eyes were wary, but he only missed a beat before answering. “I surely hope not, Ava. He was a stupid man, thoughtless as his brother, arrogant, cruel. I do not wish to ever be that person again.”

“You don’t think there was ever anything good about him?” Ava looked hard into Boyd’s eyes and he didn’t flinch, didn’t back down.

“When I was a young man, perhaps. But I’d like to think my time here with you has rekindled in me some things I had lost, or forgotten along the way. Tenderness, joy, certainly. I had them and lost them, and you brought them back to me.” As he answered he’d mounted the porch stairs, and came forward to lean against the railing directly across from her. He looked at her carefully now, no fear or concern, but clearly trying to show the sincerity of his words.

“Is that all?” she said.

Now, he looked uncomfortable, uncertain as to why she would push the subject. They’d spoken so little about it before. They both knew he’d changed, she’d told him she understood that, but she needed to make sure he understood it as she did.

“You have to understand, Ava,” he replied, “And I truly think that you do, but... being raised here indoctrinated me with certain beliefs, beliefs that were reinforced by the company I kept in the army and after. I thought I was entitled to a degree of respect and success that I could only achieve through terror and theft. I spread a hateful and ungodly lifestyle to young and impressionable men for over a decade in order to secure myself a willing militia to rob the federal government and innocent citizens of their money. I murdered men because it gave me power over them and over others. All of this was the core of who I was, Ava, and I’m telling you, I don’t want to be that any more. Just because I’m getting back into things in Harlan, doesn’t mean I’m going to do it the same way. I’ll never treat a human life so casually again as I did in the days before and after Bowman died. Do you believe what I’m saying?”

Ava answered without hesitation, “Yes.”

He slumped forward, as if all his muscles had been tense in wait for her answer. She lifted her hand and beckoned him to her, curling her finger like a wisp of that smoke. He smiled softly and sat next to her. She promptly climbed on top of him, straddling his lap and making his smile crook wickedly. Ava’s pulse began to pound, but she knew she had to take this slow.

She dragged and blew out a fast breath of smoke, at the tail end of the butt. The flavor was harsher and Ava could taste the tobacco lingering in her mouth. She didn’t usually like that feeling, it was why she usually didn’t smoke this much. But today, it seemed to fit.

She leaned over to stub out the butt in her ash tray and then turned back to Boyd, settling herself further. His hands were on her hips when she asked, “Do you remember the kinds of things you used to tell me when Bowman wasn’t around?”

Boyd’s muscles stilled and his brows knit together in a crease of confusion. His voice was carefully neutral as he replied, “Why are you asking me that?”

She spread her lips into a smile and tried to fill her eyes with the restlessness she’d been feeling all day, the same restlessness he’d kindled in her all that time ago. She brought her hands to each side of his face and said, “Sometimes, you don’t just want to ignore the smoke, or blow it away, you want to breathe it. You want to let it burn in your insides. I want to breathe you in. I want to taste you, all of you, and I want it to burn. Tell me, Boyd, what do you want to do to me?”

He tried to shake his head. “I don’t want that. You don’t either. You always hated it.”

“No, I didn’t,” she replied fiercely, curling her fingers into his hair. “I was afraid. Yes, of you, but also of how you made me feel. It was too much then. But now, I want it, Boyd. I need it, please.”

“I’m not that man anymore, Ava. Please don’t ask--”

“You are him,” she insisted. “Sure, you’ve changed, but you’ll need him before all this is over. You’ll need his cunning and his fearlessness. You have all that inside you, now let me see it. I love you and I want every part of you to love every part of me, Boyd Crowder. I’m not afraid anymore.” She pressed herself to him, and his hands came up and around her back, he spread his legs so she could get closer.

“Ava,” he said, and in his tone was a hint if what she’d been searching for. She thought he meant it as a warning.

“I want to feel your words across my skin, Boyd. Use all your ten dollar words and tell me what you’re gonna do,” she spoke into his ear, low and unrelenting. “Tell me.”

“Fine,” he said the word like it had been ripped from his lips and his fingers curled into her back like claws unsheathing. “You want me to tell you about all the times I look at you and think about bending you over the kitchen table, or pulling you down on the stairs? Do you want me to utter every exquisite detail of my sexual fantasies, wherein I pry you open with my tongue and teeth until you beg for my cock?”

“Yes,” she moaned, leaning back and unbuttoning her shirt. She wanted to feel his breath on her skin, all over her. “Yes.”

His hand came up and around to the back of her head and he took her hair tightly in his fist, making her look at him. His eyes were wild, but still restrained, and Ava knew she had to listen. She braced herself against him as he said, “I told you I wanted to be a better man, Ava. I could ignore these things for you, but I can’t if you won’t let me. This is about choice and that choice is yours now, since you’ve asked for it so baldly.”

“We don’t choose our natures, Boyd. And we can’t choose to ignore them, either. You’re not the only one with a dark side. I know can live with yours, but you’re going to have to live with mine too. ‘Cause, darlin’, this ain’t going away.”

His eyes scanned her face, as if he were looking for the truth in her words. She rolled her hips against him, turned on as all hell. Finally, he leaned forward and pressed his face against her exposed chest, dipping her back to lick her down across her stomach. His breath came out his nose in long, hot streams against her skin, raising goose flesh on her arms and legs.

“Do you want me to do these things to you, or are we just talking about it?” he whispered to her belly.

Ava blinked and took a shaky breath, “Just talk. For now.”

He smiled against her skin. “What a wonder you are.” He pulled off her shirt completely and his hands found the clasp of her bra. “Do you want a bed, or should we do it here?”

“You think anyone’s gonna catch us at it?” she asked with her fingers down at his fly.

“If they did, baby, I can’t tell if would it be a positive or negative turn of events for you,” he laughed.

The only breathless response she could muster was, “I want to stay here.” The sun was warm on her back and it would be easy to hike up her skirt for him. “Talk to me, Boyd, come on,” she said.

His tongue flicked out of his mouth and around her nipple, and again out and to the underside of her tit. He laughed again, a soft breath, but this time it was low, dangerous. “You want me to tell you about the night I saw you again, after Raylan shot me?”

Ava nodded, wide-eyed, and together they pulled off his trousers as he spoke, “You came out on this porch with your shotgun in hand, ready to shoot, and the strength of you, Ava, the raw beauty... I came there to apologize, but all I thought about on the walk back to my camp was pulling that gun from your hands and taking you on this very bench.” Boyd’s cock was free now and Ava clambered closer, sinking herself down on top of him. His hands were on her buttocks, fingers moving in a frenzied massage and her hushed gasps grew louder.

“I wanted you to let me pull that vest off you in pieces and rip apart the rest of your clothes,” he continued to her neck. “I wanted you to moan for me, yes, just like that. And I prayed to God to get those thoughts outta my head and He didn’t listen at all...and...”

He trailed off there and had stilled against her. Ava knew he was thinking too far into that story. “Another time, Boyd,” she urged, moving her hips slowly, rhythmically, ”Tell me about somethin’ else.”

His back arched and his hands found her waist again, he groaned and kissed her, speaking into her lips and mouth, “When you said you knew you were fine after the fuse box shocked you, that was the first time after everything happened that I wanted you, wanted anything, and I wanted it so badly, Ava.”

“What did you want?” she asked, remembering his voice in the dark, against her burning hand. “God, Boyd, tell me.” Every part of her was burning now, not with a fire, but with something electric and fluid, something almost unnatural. She felt as ethereal as the smoke and she flowed around him.

“I wanted to split you open and find the place where he hurt you, for the final time, Ava, I swear to Jesus, I wanted to swallow that pain, that fear, whole for you. I wanted to carry you up to your bed and make you to come apart under me and make you forget every cut, every bruise, every burn he ever gave you.”

Boyd’s voice filled up the air between them and Ava closed her eyes and let it sweep over her. His tongue was on her collarbone now, travelling across her neck to her shoulder, one of his hands teased at her breast, the other at her clit as she sped up her pace against him.

“And now?” she asked, her voice ragged.

Boyd just smiled in response, lips taught, contained as before and suppressing that dangerous desire, but hungry to be exposed. His arm wrapped around her waist, as if to anchor her, and he slid a single finger up inside her, keeping his thumb on her clit. She gasped as he let loose a flash of teeth and his finger curled in just the right way. All that restive, electric fire flowed out of him and threatened to overwhelm her. Ava cried out and strained against his arm, but he held her fast and she rocked back against him over and over as she rode it out until he was right there with her.

It burned them up from within.

He bent low and breathed deep against her belly after it passed. She ran her fingers over the sweat soaked line of his hair and over the damp shirt neither of them had bothered to remove from him. Now, she took the buttons between her fingers and undid them one by one. She let him slide back on the bench and pulled his arms, loose and pliable as they were, from the sleeves.

Boyd smiled at her again, but it was softer, wider, and kind. She bent and kissed a line across his chest, looking up through her lashes as she spoke to his skin, “We can’t erase the old wounds, Boyd.”

“I know, baby,” he said.

She smiled, as she did every time he called her that, and knew they both could live with them and love each other anyway.


End file.
